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In Detroit, Mayor’s Race Is One Piece of a Puzzle

Campaign signs for the mayoral candidates in Detroit.Credit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times

DETROIT — If people along the streets of this city seem less than consumed by the prospect of choosing a new mayor on Tuesday, perhaps it is the barrage of distractions: the governor who has been testifying in a courthouse here about Detroit’s descent into bankruptcy; the appointed emergency manager who has brought in his own team to run City Hall; the long list of questions about the fate of this city’s artwork, its streetlights, its tens of thousands of empty buildings.

Yet Detroit’s mayoral election is one more piece of a puzzle unfolding here as a city that has long wrestled with dysfunction and debt seems to be throwing everything up in the air and searching for a way to start over. Some in Detroit, who last month saw former Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick sentenced to 28 years in prison for corruption, say the choice is stark: traditional Detroit politics versus some new, more technocratic way forward.

Benny Napoleon, the sheriff of Wayne County and a longtime Detroit police officer who is running for mayor, has drawn support from some labor unions and ministers. He is trailing in the polls against Mike Duggan, a former hospital executive who is credited with returning fiscal health to Detroit Medical Center and has the backing of many business leaders.

Mr. Duggan, who took first place in a primary field with more than a dozen competitors in August despite running as a write-in candidate, would become the first white mayor in 40 years for Detroit, where the population is 82 percent black and racial tensions have helped shape the city’s political landscape.

“You look around here and just think, we need to try something different,” said Robert Tucker, 64, who is black and a supporter of Mr. Duggan. “We need a change, new blood, new thinking. I don’t really care what race he is.”

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"I think people are making a decision based on who can best improve the quality of life." Mike Duggan, candidate for mayor and former hospital executiveCredit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times

No doubt few cities have witnessed mayoral races as fraught with complication as this. Even as the candidates made final forays through Detroit’s neighborhoods and churches, the job itself was oddly undefined and in flux. Since March, after the State of Michigan deemed Detroit to be in severe financial distress, plagued by $18 billion in debts, a state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn D. Orr, has held most decision-making power.

By May, Mayor Dave Bing, who won the mayor’s job pledging a course of fiscal stability for the struggling city, had announced that he would not seek re-election. And in recent months he has voiced frustration at his “supposed partnership” with and diminished role beside Mr. Orr.

And so, as Mr. Duggan and Mr. Napoleon have ticked off plans for fighting crime and improving neighborhoods, some voters here still see the entire exercise as peculiar. What exactly, they say, is the use of electing a new mayor if Mr. Orr is really in charge?

Many here presume that a new mayor might gain true power next fall after the city emerges, presumably, from its continuing federal bankruptcy proceedings. Mr. Orr has suggested such a timetable, and the state’s emergency-manager law permits city officials to seek to remove him in late 2014. Still, many questions remain, including whether Detroit will even be deemed eligible for bankruptcy protection by a judge, leaving all sorts of uncertainties for an incoming mayor.

Supporters of Mr. Duggan point to his experiences at the struggling medical center and at the helm of a regional bus authority as a turnaround recipe for Detroit, where he has pledged to improve extraordinarily long police response times, get tens of thousands of streetlights back on and fill some of the city’s thousands of empty homes with new families.

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"The powers that be have anointed their candidate." Benny Napoleon, Wayne County sheriff and candidate for mayorCredit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times

“That’s been my history — going into organizations where people said, ‘Is that possible?’ ” Mr. Duggan, 55, said in an interview on Friday. “You start with the vision, and you work relentlessly toward that vision.”

But Mr. Napoleon, 58, has raised questions about Mr. Duggan’s credentials, often noting that Mr. Duggan lived in the suburbs, not the city, just before announcing his mayoral bid. He suggests that Mr. Duggan, a former Wayne County prosecutor, came up through a system laden with politics.

Critics of Mr. Duggan have also questioned the role of business leaders, some of whom have given generously to further his bid, and ask whether he will merely advance the needs of an increasingly gleaming downtown over those of far emptier and troubled neighborhoods.

“The powers that be have anointed their candidate and decided that they can buy an election,” Mr. Napoleon said recently from his campaign headquarters.

Mr. Napoleon’s plans for Detroit include a police officer with special responsibilities in each of the city’s 139 square miles; more data-driven crime-fighting techniques; and anchor developments, including businesses, to bolster city neighborhoods, along with new public-safety service centers. Mr. Duggan and Mr. Napoleon are both Democrats, though the election on Tuesday is nonpartisan.

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Supporters of Mr. Duggan point to his experiences at the struggling medical center and at the helm of a regional bus authority as a turnaround recipe for Detroit,Credit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Both say they disagree with the presence of an emergency manager, a role that has infuriated some who view it as a trampling of the democratic process. Gov. Rick Snyder, whose fellow Republicans control the State Capitol, put the change into effect in a mostly black, Democrat-led city.

Mr. Napoleon said he intended to push for the removal of Mr. Orr, with whom he said he expected to have “no relationship.” For his part, Mr. Duggan said he hoped his election would persuade Mr. Snyder, with whom he said he shared a “working relationship,” to send Mr. Orr home more rapidly.

Since 1974, when Coleman Young was sworn into office, this city has had a black mayor. By 1980, the city’s population — once 1.8 million in the glow of the auto industry’s successes — had shrunk (it is a little over 700,000 now), in part as white residents left for the suburbs. Both Mr. Napoleon, who is black, and Mr. Duggan say they do not see race as an issue in the election.

“It was a far greater conversation a year ago,” said Mr. Duggan, whose campaign was holding its 250th house party over the weekend in the Detroit home where he grew up. “In the course of the last year, I think people are making a decision based on who can best improve the quality of life in the city.”

Others seemed less certain. One political analyst described a weary sense by some black residents that if Mr. Napoleon loses, the city will be giving up on the concept of black leadership.

The Rev. Charles E. Williams II, who leads the Detroit chapter of the National Action Network and has vehemently opposed the state’s involvement in Detroit, said he would continue to press for Mr. Napoleon’s election. Race, he said, is among his reasons. “As an African-American man, I feel that there is nothing wrong with people feeling culturally connected to who they elect,” he said. “There’s no reason not to bring it up.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 3, 2013, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: In Detroit, Mayor’s Race Is One Piece Of a Puzzle. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe